


Serpents in the Garden

by escspace



Series: A Family History [1]
Category: Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Drama, Flashback Era, Gen, Light Tragedy, Modern Ragar AU, sponsored by dark academia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escspace/pseuds/escspace
Summary: Rajak Kertia's father and clan leader, Sir Ragar Kertia, for whom Rajak has always possessed a great admiration, falls mysteriously ill one day in the wake of a conspiracy.
Relationships: Frankenstein/Ragar Kertia, Frankenstein/Ragar Kertia/Cadis Etrama Di Raizel, Karias Blerster/Rajak Kertia, Ragar Kertia & Rajak Kertia, Rajak Kertia & Karias Blerster
Series: A Family History [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2071620
Comments: 38
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Modern Kertia Expansion Pack: Keeping Up with the Kertias





	1. Chapter 1

I had always been a sufficiently astute and disciplined pupil to my father, whose title I was made aware of that I would inevitably inherit the moment I could comprehend what the phrase _clan leader_ meant. In his footsteps, I followed; in his silence, I listened. I was _the_ _heir of_ _Ragar Kertia,_ and it had never occurred to me that I could be anything else; such realities simply did not exist within the world I knew, and as my father had dedicated his very existence to our Lord and our country, so would I, to continue the clan leader’s legacy, as this was the noble path of existence. I had truly believed this for the majority of my life, even though honor was not something that always came easily to me in my younger years and was a duty learned either through my father’s disciplining or through my own strenuous self reflection.

It was not a particularly special day in which I encountered him for the first time: Father’s friend, the human, the noble hunter, the Noblesse’s Bonded—he who possessed many legends, souls, and names, but the name people now knew him by was Frankensein. I had only heard stories about him thus far, both from my father and from others not so keen to his residence in Lukedonia, and upon seeing his silhouette, I recognized him near instantly. My father often discussed his friend in my presence, to such an extent that I felt as though I knew Sir Frankenstein myself—that I was personally familiar with how sunlight made golden halos of his hair or how he held himself with perpetually magnetic confidence or how multitudinous his smiles could be. Though I had my own reservations regarding the human, he was whom both my clan leader and the Lord acknowledged and so I kept such controversial thoughts to myself and placed my faith in Father's judgement of character, as I had always.

The courtyard garden had the fortunate company of a warm and easy afternoon, and the human and my father were conversing in the shade of one of the fruit-bearing trees. Between them, Sir Frankenstein held something small and reddish orange in color that he had harvested, like he had captured a sunset in between his fingers. From this distance, I could still perceive a slight black char that ate away at the ruffles of the man’s sleeve. Then, in a sudden and rare act of intimacy, Sir Ragar Kertia pulled down his mask and swiftly leaned forward to take a bite, the surely sweet nectar momentarily wetting his lips before being discreetly licked away. The mask was returned as he looked upon his friend with a nearly juvenile earnestness with which even I was unfamiliar—a fact that startled me—and to which Sir Frankenstein made a bemused expression.

Becoming acutely aware of their desire for a spot of privacy, I departed to a more distant wing of the estate to resume my studies with the hopes of possibly impressing Sir Gejutel K. Landegre the next time we were to meet, admittedly partially motivated by my own quiet vanity. I had not yet crossed the arches when I became aware of the demanding footfalls of another noble who found keeping my pace and attention imperative. Karias Blerster possessed the most peculiar quality of being utterly unlike his parent in character—to a near unnoblelike degree—even if they shared similar stylings in terms of appearance. At times, this both exasperated and confounded me, and it compelled one to wonder how it was that Sir Krasis Blerster had raised his heir, though I was in no position to question such things.

"Finally, I run into you. I don't believe we've seen each other for the past..." He drifted off to count imaginary numbers on his fingers before giving up on the endeavor entirely with a playfully vexed wave. "Doesn't matter. But I have you now, Rajak." Karias laughed to himself and flicked his blonde hair back with a gloved hand, as dramatic as usual, even if no one had asked for such dramatics. I only deigned to give him a brief sideways glance as we both continued to walk. While I did not look towards him, how he pouted was obvious enough in his tone of voice. "Not even a greeting? As cold as ever, I see."

"What is it that you need from me?" I urged.

"Is it not enough to desire a peer's company?"

"For you, Karias? No."

" _Oh!_ You wound me. Tell me, are all Kertia men like this?"

Normally, such a flippant question would not have given me such pause, but on this day and in this afternoon, it did. Being like my father, upholding his virtues and following in his footsteps with tireless scrutiny, had been an old source of pride, and as such, I had always considered myself rather knowing of the noble Ragar Kertia. He was what I studied most of all, and any book or scroll paled in comparison. Having witnessed what I had in the garden, it dawned on me for likely the first time that perhaps Father possessed of sanctuaries, romantic twilights and dim regions, whose gates were lucidly barred to even myself. I had no answer for Karias.

He was accustomed to my silence, however, and took it upon himself to one-sidedly continue this banal conversation as we arrived in step to one of the greater libraries, greeted only by the silence of aged papers and rays of dust illuminated by the spill of the stained glass.

* * *

  
Death was as real and as commonplace as life itself; they were things that went hand in hand for most beings, as I knew. To a noble, it was a ritual. It would be inevitable that my father would one day enter his eternal sleep, and his soul would rest within the inheritor to the soul weapon Kartas. Such was a noble's death—one did not truly cease to exist; even in slumber, we were eternally perpetuated. Nonetheless, I would be untruthful if I claimed that the thought of my father's eventual absence did not sadden me in the slightest.

It was devotion to duty that stilled my trembling heart.

So wholly had I believed in the continuity of the noble soul that it was with acute curiosity that I encountered a particularly aged and weathered book during my studies that recounted an entirely contrary phenomenon also known by the name _death_. The detailing on the cover had been nearly completely worn away, but I was still able to recognize the slight impressions of a coiled serpent which I found to be reminiscent of the one who belonged to the Agvain Clan. The book's spine cracked with age as I perused its contents, from which I learned that:

Before a prior Lord, one even more ancient than our own, had ordained that nobles were to congregate within the land now known as Lukedonia, those of our kind lived rather dispersedly amongst the humans and their various young civilizations. Revealingly, it was from such human civilizations that nobles received the muses that shaped much of Lukedonia's aesthetic qualities to this day, but this was rather a footnote. As contact between our kinds was markedly more frequent in those olden eras, so too was the frequency of soul bonds. What could a human gain from such a union? Powers beyond their understanding—and immortality. As for the noble, they received in return a soul. Perhaps it was such an arrangement that was the origin for the many human stories of deviltry, but selling one's soul only for the sake of power and riches seemed rather absurd to me.

What held my attention most of all, however, was the following passage:

_There is no ordinary human who could overpower even a juvenile pureblood; however, this does not signify that it is impossible for a human to kill a noble. Death at a human's hand results from a poisoning, not of the body, but of the noble soul, and such a death is not eternal slumber; it is disappearance: the body decays, and the soul is no more. Those nobles who have formed true contracts are the most susceptible. What brings about di—_

The rest of the page had been crudely torn off, and I traced my fingers along its sharp, jagged edge, wondering as to what could have possessed the book's assailent to have committed such a careless act. My studies decidedly came to a close when Karias, likely noticing a subtle change in my expression, lifted his eyes from his own manuscript and inquired about the situation.

"Someone has torn several pages out of this," I promptly answered, though I remained distantly focused upon the faded words and yellowed paper.

"And you're certain is wasn't yourself out of disdain for all things that are not your clan leader?"

I finally then fixed my gaze on Karias for the sole purpose of leveling an unamused glare at him.

He snapped his book shut in a single hand, the sound sudden and ostentatiously loud within the otherwise silent library, and I found myself grateful that no other tables besides our own was occupied while I was in the company of Karias Blerster. "Can you not stand even a little jesting, Rajak?" he said.

In response, I only maintained my silence, shut my own book with a quiet finality, and stood from my seat to return the text to its appropriate place of residence tucked away in between the many other covers.

Karias clicked his tongue petulantly as I turned to leave. "Always so austere..." he chuckled to himself. "How he can live like that confounds me, but I suppose that's part of his charm. The poor thing..."

* * *

The new morning was only a handful of ticks before turning into noon when I saw my father in the entrance room and turning towards the crowned front doors, his steps still ever silent on the decorated stone tiles and geometric mosaics underneath. "Will you be sparring with him again today, Clan Leader? Sir Urokai Agvain has been looking for you."

"Unless the matter is of importance to the Lord or to Lukedonia's safety, Urokai may wait. I will only be in the company of Sir Raizel and his Bonded in their home, however, as Frankenstein is still recovering from our prior match."

"Shall I let Sir Urokai know of your whereabouts should I encounter him again today?"

With a strange timid quality, Father pulled at his mask, appearing to give my question some thought, eyes shifting between amiable and antagonistic, before answering with his usual calm decisiveness: "No. I would like to keep this particular excursion private, Rajak."

"Very well, Sir." I dipped my head respectfully and watched my father depart with a graceful swiftness I had yet to master through the arched doorway, slipping from the cool shade of the interior into the warm touch of sunlight, dark cloak fluttering behind him like fractals of black ink in the wake of his abilities. I had grown accustomed to such a sight and to my father's frequent outings and did not find it imperative to investigate much further into their nature or reasoning, as I trusted the clan leader to inform me himself if there ever was a matter he deemed appropriate or necessary to divulge. Despite knowing this, there was still a peculiar, diminutive sort of sorrow that accompanied the sight of his departure and nipped at the edges of my heart—an inconsequential occurrence but not one that escaped my notice. But such paltry and personal negativity always disappeared upon greeting Father at his return, so I thought little of it and occupied his absence with the duties of a fledgling clan leader and training on my own.

* * *

My heels dragged deep scores into the earth as Karias's blow forced me backwards, but I sprung on him again, slipping into the air, surely invisible, before he could reorient himself to my new position and landed the forceful swing of my elbow on his back, tipping Karias off of his balance for a moment that was brief but left a window just wide enough for me to sweep him off his feet entirely. Dust billowed upwards and faded the ends of my black coat when he fell to the ground, but as I became arrogant and therefore careless, I too found my legs swept from under and landed with a graceless thud not far from him. It was like this, with the both of us half covered in dirt and haphazard wounds that one of the knights of the Kertia Clan found us in the colosseum.

"Sir Rajak, the scout team has returned from the Eastern lands."

I was on my feet urgently and attempting to present myself as most resembling my clan leader's collected demeanor as best I could even in my disheveled state. "Has there been any findings on the Noblesse's whereabouts?"

The knight's eyes were casted to the ground shamefully, and he dipped his head such that his face became obscured in the shadow of his pale hair. "No, Sir... It is as though he has simply vanished."

"Has no one considered that he's stopped living?" Karias remarked blithely, not even having gotten up off the ground. Rather, he had straightened out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles and was leaning back, supporting himself with an arm and simply lounging, not at all bothered about the dust. It was definitively intentional the manner in which he sprawled himself to allow his bare chest, exposed by his increasingly low collar, to catch the sunlight as he tilted his chin upwards as though to kiss the very sky. "How else could a noble just disappear?"

I narrowed my eyes at such excessive theatrics, but it was his comments that I found most unbecoming. Pointedly ignoring him, I continued to address the knight. "When shall I expect a full report from your conroi?"

"Within the week, Sir."

I nodded sternly and dismissed the knight afterwards, noting to myself that I should pour over the collection of older documents in the mean time before discussing the matter with my clan leader.

While I was not terribly familiar with the duties and personal life of the Noblesse called Cadis Etrama di Raizel, I had taken notice of Father's behavior since his disappearance and had begun to see Sir Ragar Kertia with even less frequency than before, but even during those sparse moments in which I was fortunate enough to be in his presence, he seemed markedly exhausted and I would be regretful of tiring him further. I did not know the depth of what relations Father kept with the Noblesse and the Noblesse's Bonded, but for them, he was personally, intimately motivated, relentlessly persuant, to seek Sir Cadis Etrama di Raizel. So I, as well, did all that I could to aid him.

Karias finally deigned to pick himself off of the ground. "You truly believe the Noblesse is out there?"

"My belief does not matter. It is my clan leader's."

He scoffed. "Good luck then, I suppose."

* * *

My clan leader was the highest point at which I could imagine nobility. It was he whom I, with no frugalness in effort, took after, as I had the impression there was no one better whom I could strive to become; I did not and could not doubt him in any capacity. As I was a bearer of the Kertia name, I was dutybound to uphold the clan's honor, and it was a great concern of mine that I might, in one way or another, act foolishly so as to not only disgrace myself but also Father. The thought repulsed me, and I hoped that such a day would not come before I entered my own eternal slumber and long afterwards as well. In honor of my father, I toiled with utmost steadfastness and found quaint rewards in the admiration of my peers, though it was my father's approval most of all that I sought. My desire for his particular recognition bred in me the habit of astute observance, and it was with this observance that I watched him return to the estate one night, the aura about his shadow somehow forlorn.

"Has something happened, Father?" I asked, quietly emerging from the shadows and into the moon-dusted air.

He looked at me for a long while, the caution in his bright red gaze melting into something entirely tender and loving, like it was I who was his sole purpose for existence, like there were none better and more deserving of Sir Ragar Kertia's acknowledgment than myself. I found it all, at once stunning and overwhelming and could only stare back, shaken, as I awaited his response.

He stepped towards me, heel purposefully clicking against the tiles, unlike his usual silence, and placed a hand on my shoulder. Even as his rare touch was delicate, I felt the great weight of his affection, and it inspired in me such immense gratitude that I could hardly bear it, that a simmering, trembling emotion akin to dread rose within me for fear something unspeakable had happened or would soon happen for Father's kindness to be so generous tonight, like an omen. "What am I to you foremost, Rajak, your clan leader or your parent?" he finally said, voice achingly soft.

Though I was slightly numbed to the reality of the situation, my response was near automatic: "My clan leader."

An emotion passed over Father’s eyes that I could not decipher, haunting and wonderful and tragic—like longing for something that could never come to be, that could only be beautiful and remained the most beautiful in one’s imagination—a poem, a song, an epic. In that moment, I realized, I did not truly understand all that Sir Ragar Kertia was, that all of my studies had only given me a mere impression of him, that sanctuaries were still beyond my reach, and that I, as his heir, was only an imitation, a shallow shadow, a naive doppelgänger.

He nodded. “I see...” Father whispered, then silently drifted deeper into the house on his own, leaving me to ponder upon the exchange until sunrise.

It was not until several days later when I reconvened with Sir Gejutel that I learned that was the night of Sir Frankenstein’s departure.


	2. Chapter 2

It was within a period of several years following Sir Frankenstein's exodus from Lukedonia, when, as I was training with my father, I was affronted by the first sight of his failing health. As I twisted around with anticipation in an attempt to parry my clan leader's next strike, what I saw was not the white blaze of another slice sailing through the air, nor was it the disorienting multiplicity of summoned doppelgangers or the tail of an aggressive shadow rushing towards me. Instead, Kartas suddenly dissolved from my father's grasp, like black sand slipping through one's fingers, as he buckled forward, a hand jumping to his mouth, eyes widened with visceral anxiety—a potent concentration of the realization that something had gone terribly wrong; the silent fear with which he looked at me was never something I had desired to witness or thought that I would ever witness in my lifetime. I was immediately by his side despite my wounds as Father painfully coughed into his hand; each choke that raked within his chest sank talons into my psyche, reaching deeply into where my father's blades had not. Wearying tremors stubbornly took a hold of his shoulders.

"Father—" I blurted once I had at last mustered the strength to sober from my initial bewilderment, but I could not determine if my clan leader had been able to hear me, as his concentration seemed entirely consumed by the mere task of standing on his feet. Force of will allowed me to still my own trembling fingers as I reached for him, but strict propriety witheld me from touching Sir Ragar Kertia, and I was caught, frozen as I looked on, unknowing of what to do. I had never before seen my father in such a state, and it infected me with a grotesque feeling of sickness. Slowly, I withdrew my hand, my fingers curling frigidly by my side.

When at last his coughing had eased, Father straightened himself while his palm remained cupped around his chin. He was staring into the distance, peering far away and strictly ahead, as though watching ghosts, as though avoiding my own apprehensive gaze. Then, as his eyes tired, his fingers unfurled and drifted downwards with the weight of resignation, revealing to me what had spilled from his mouth onto his hand: red dust, glimmering—starlit—as it drifted upwards and disappeared with the unsympathetic wind, ink in water, smoke in sky.

They were pieces of my father's soul that fluttered away, and it dawned upon me with dreadful slowness the name of the phenomenon I was witnessing: _death_. For the first time, I felt horror—foreign and leviathan—and I opened my mouth to utter words that could not occur to me and found myself silenced by a surreal numbness, its weight as oppressive as heat but as ghostly as the cold.

Father did not look at me, his expression flattened into an unreadable plane reminiscent of the still surface of a pool that only stared back with one's own naive face when peered into. Then, he closed his eyes and breathed in silence, everything about him, from his countenance to his posture contemplative and measured, glasslike and willfully sterile, as I myself remained in observance. I had the unfortunate impression that this was not the first time nor would it be the final time my father would be subject to such fits of decay and that this event was not one I was ever meant to see. It was only by my father's single miscalculation or by an unanticipated development that had allowed me to witness this lapse in his composure which he would have preferred to suffer in his own privacy.

I could only wonder for how long this condition had plagued him. "Father..."

"Return home, Rajak. We will stop here." He had opened his eyes, but unrelentingly, he did not look at me.

I stared at him, watchful, waiting, tense, pulled in opposing directions, my tongue on the verge of impudence, audacity and concern tempting me as blood does a mutant to stay, to give chase, to press Sir Ragar Kertia about the matter, but I only dipped my head in obedience. "Yes, Clan Leader," I said, and, giving him a final reproachful glance, I turned away.

Inexplicably, I was disgusted with myself.

* * *

"You seem to be in a morose sort of mood—more so than usual." Karias's shadow fell over me as he blocked my view.

I did not break my silence to answer, which only prompted him to become even friendlier as he decided for himself to sit down beside me on the stone bench that had been warmed by basking in the morning hours of sunlight. We both stared forward at the water which trickled in unconscious and perpetual serenity, caring not for what turbulence occupied my own mind, each droplet playing a tender note upon impact with the surface below and disrupting—shattering—what would otherwise resemble a cool mirror. A leaf traced a wandering path downwards until it landed on the water and sent subtle concentric ripples outwards that then returned to the epicenter upon encountering the fountain's stone walls.

"Is it not something you can speak about?" he continued.

"Am I so easy to read?"

"No. But what Blerster would I be if I could not?" Karias offered around his smile with the whorish expectation that I would accept it and tapped once on his cheek as he leaned closer to me. "There's no deceiving these eyes. They are a signature of the Blerster Clan, you see," he said without an ounce of humility. Then he leaned back, and even the very act of sighing was characterized by drama.

I had begun to suspect that this came easily to him, that Karias, in reality, was not _performative_ but rather, all of his theatrics were simply natural manifestations of an unrestrained belief in himself: a blazing, pertinacious confidence independent of even his rank or heritage. In that way, I supposed he was very much like a noble, and, begrudgingly, I admired a small part of him for it.

"Don't worry. I won't pester you," he told me.

I stood smoothly from the bench without a single excessive motion. "You are already pestering me," I retorted, my gaze set forward, but a curious sentimentality budding within compelled me to turn to him, so I did and further informed him that, "I will be in the stacks, if you care for my company."

He lifted his brow. "The library again? I suppose I have some reading to finish as well anyway." Karias then tilted far forward to a degree great enough to displace his hair, causing its shadows to sweep across his face, and planted his hands on his knees in order to push himself upright. "Lead the way, _Sir Kertia_." It was either an attempt to mock me or charm me—and perhaps it was both—how he dipped into a bow with the mention of my clan's name and extended a hand in the direction we were to go, gloved palm opened skyward and the ruffles of his sleeve hanging elegantly off of his wrist, exposing a shadowed sliver of his skin.

I briefly scrutinized him without comment then pivoted on my heel and darted away as a mere flickering mirage, Karias quick to tail me.

* * *

In this world, I believed there was not a single person my father truly scorned with the exception of the Agvain clan leader, Urokai Agvain. The red of his hair blazed almost as much as his temper, which without fail ignited at any mention of Father's human friend. Nonetheless, I had convinced myself rather thoroughly that it was he who would possess the most insight regarding my father's condition and so sought a small, private assembly with him, which, to my surprise, was informally and readily granted.

"What could you want with me?"

"Are you familiar with this manuscript?" I slid the old book across the oaken table with the serpent facing towards Sir Urokai Agvain, whose expression hardened into ice upon seeing it before quickly flattening into a cautious disinterest.

"No," was his firm answer. "I don't know this book, and I don't know why you've come to me with such questions."

"The cover bears the symbol of your clan, and you are the Agvain Clan Leader. Several pages have been torn—"

"So you've come with accusations."

"That is not what I am implying, Sir."

When Sir Urokai deigned to look at me, within his eyes, for an instant, like a flash, a spark—ravaging embers and then ash—was concentrated such undisguised contempt, as though I were an anathema to him, that I found my breath arrested as I wondered what I had done to offend the clan leader so severely. However, he then appeared to arrive at a sudden, lucid realization, and his gaze softened into one impassive and nearly apologetic. I then conceived of the idea that the prior contempt was not in reality directed at me—yet another event I was not meant to witness—but rather at someone whom he saw momentarily standing in my place: a phantom of my father.

"What interests you so much about this book and the Agvain Clan so suddenly?" he prompted.

Dipping my head once, grateful that he had chosen to hear me, I elected to reveal to Sir Urokai my motivations without much shrewdness, as he was the clan leader, under the direct command of our Lord, and of esteem higher than my own. "I have the apprehension that what is described in these pages my be pertinent to my clan leader—"

"Ragar?" Sir Urokai's posture brightened with a curiosity that I thought had the subtle quality of being misplaced slightly to the left: curiosity that was a little too curious. I found my words halted by a feeling of dubiousness difficult to temper in the clan leader's presence despite his standing being one deserving of only steadfast respect. Sir Urokai Agvain pressed further: "What is it about your father?" and regardless of what personal reservations I held, I could not deny him a truthful answer.

"Sir Ragar Kertia has been ailing. I only wish to help him."

He thought upon my words for a short time, the color of his eyes appearing especially nebulous. "There is no helping him," said he.

"Sir?"

Sir Urokai's expression twisted gradually into bitter disdain, one that ached for eons, its roots buried deep into the rotten earth—an Agvain's disdain. "Rajak, you understand, a noble does not fall ill easily. If you are coming to me with this book in your hands, desperate enough to seek answers from my clan, then your father's condition is beyond the point of recovering from."

"Surely not—!" I immediately recoiled upon realizing my outlandish tone and stepped back, quieting myself again and bowing my head in an apology. "How can you be so certain, Sir Agvain?" I contested with all the deference I could manifest, hopeful that it would be enough for the clan leader to pardon my rudeness. I did not dare gaze up at him again. A silence stretched between us that weighed down upon my head with particular discrimination, and I began to fear that I had acted unbecomingly enough for Sir Urokai to dismiss me without the kindness of further commentary, as was his right to do so.

After a half-minute, mercifully and to my humble surprise, he tolerated my continued audience and chose to speak further, quiet and restrained but more expressive and wiser: "My soul weapon, Dragus, is the weakest of the thirteen; it is missing a generation—my predecessor—and I have done all in my power to overcome this." Upon his face, I could discern what I had learned to be a noble's pride rear its colossus head. Without needing to raise his voice, grandly, proudly, Sir Urokai still spoke, as though he himself carried the manifest prestige and faith of the Agvain clan, both deity and worshipper to his name. "And I have overcome this—this weakness, this disease that plagues my soul and blood and that will plague the rest of my lineage. It is a curse that the Agvain now must bear from those creatures we call human for which the prior clan leader naively felt ardor and tossed away his soul, his pride, his—" A sudden emotion stilled his tongue and his lips snapped together abruptly, his hunted and haunted expression startling myself to a similar degree. A word he could not reveal to me in the present moment perished in the detritus of acute silence. "...And now, your father will condemn you and the Kertias to the same fate."

"My clan leader is not bonded," I said.

"They need not be bonded to be damned," he returned.

Upon this latest insight, an incident that I could not easily dislodge from my consideration filled in the crenelated edges of my understanding: they were in the garden, a noble and a human.

* * *

I found Father in his study one evening by candlelight, quill in his hand and studiously craned over a paper, the twin locks of his hair draping downwards and winding themselves into gentle spirals upon his desk. To his side was a small, open chest constructed of dark red wood in which there were deposited numerous other papers, each one rolled up tightly and bound with ribbon. As my eyes roamed furtively—the way they do when one has walked in on a row or a private, interpersonal scene but did not wish to stress one's awareness—I could begin to distinguish the letters at the top of the page. _Dear Frankenstein_ , it read.

My father seemed to be too consumed by the task at hand to notice my presence, or perhaps he had simply chosen not to acknowledge me for the time being, and hesitation accompanied the prospect of disturbing him. My trepidation was cleanly cut, however, in the same manner by which a sailing arrow cuts the air as it journeys to sink into the heart of game, by the sound of a sickly scratch: the hard scrape of the quill's needle point that carved a crooked valley into the soft paper and flooded it with black ink. Droplets fell with the same weight and starkness of blood, dotting the edges of the half written letter, as his hand veered from its careful calligraphy to clumsily place the feather onto the table. Father's fingers curled around his mouth. His cough was only quiet and could only barely disturb his posture, but the tidal magnitude of its significance disturbed me.

I averted my eyes from the sight of the ensuing red dust and its loathsome recrudescence, but the sharp crinkle of paper drew my attention to the vignette again. Father had crumpled the letter in his hand, the shadows formed by the creases pointed and chaotic under the flickering orange light, drawing labyrinths without escape onto themselves. He placed the crushed page down.

Then, he picked up his pen, dipped it again in the glass bottle of ink, and started anew.

 _My friend,_ he wrote.

With fluid silence, the same as that of a rotating mirror's reflection drifting without friction across shapes and surfaces as the silver plane turned, I slipped out of the room to dutifully preserve Father's privacy.

* * *

Submerged in the seclusion of one chilled evening, I was simply passing along the dirt laced border of the forest on the way to an arrangement with Karias when a commotion interrupted my lonesome campaign. I stilled and observed the air, the silent atmosphere having gathered an inertia and an asphyxiating temper that were perhaps born from my own apprehension—such was the quality of premonitions. There was the sound of a struggle and the distinct pressure of noble power emanating from some distance into the woods. I abandoned the pathway and sank into the forest.

"Humans, those writhing, feeding jackals, they have everything to gain, and us nobles, we have everything to lose," spoke the voice of Sir Urokai Agvain as I emerged upon the peripheries of a scene, still hidden among the shadows of the trees. "I know how nobles die, and I don't pity you, Ragar, but your son. Not only has that human taken Sir Raizel from us, but he will take a father from his child as well."

My father's coveted silence—that I had always revered, that I had always thought to be the most becoming code of conduct, and that throughout my life was as resolute, as unflinching, and as perpetual as the bright bodies that hung in the sky and the sky itself from which those bodies watched Lukedonia—shattered. I saw in my father the ripples on the surface of a pool of water that distorted one's reflection into chaotic, unrecognizable shapes. Kartas disappeared from Sir Ragar Kertia's hands, and his aura, once so vigilantly hidden, cascaded forth in golden glows, and I shielded myself with my arm from its blinding force. The space Father occupied was suddenly empty, and he was upon Sir Urokai, one fist crumpling his shirt as he drove the Agvain clan leader into the ground and as the other fist found his face again and again, the obscene crack of knuckles against cheek becoming the only sound I could hear within the forest, subsuming even my own thoughts. Sir Ragar Kertia, overtaken with emotion, did not honor Sir Urokai with Kartas; instead, my father embraced and was embraced by the catharsis of a crude and ugly violence that I had never before encountered and that was neither duty nor justice.

I had not believed Father was capable of such antagonism until this day.

Sir Urokai made no move to counter and only grinned upwards. I saw blood on his sharp teeth. _"It's unlike you to be so agitated, Ragar,"_ he said, bright eyes serpentine. "Look who's watching," he hissed.

Father's gazed jerked upwards and twisted towards me as he straightened, almost numbly releasing Urokai. I, in turn, could only stare back wordlessly, and the entirety of the universe which I knew concentrated on the turgid silence that bridged us. The forest, the sky, and even the earth underneath my footing melted away for my father's eyes and his expression that contorted beneath his regal mask into something poisoned and tragic—a Kertia's shame. I had the epiphany that there was nothing he could say to me and I to him, in this moment, as what I had witnessed was my father bared before the world, what rested underneath his grace and propriety, what bled continually within his soul. I had glimpsed into the garden and the sanctuary under this twilight and saw something that terrified me, that displaced me, whom I now perceived as a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. An eternity contracted into mere seconds. Finally, Father turned away and fled.

Reality, that great, slumbering creature, shook itself and came to me lethargically and in disparate pieces, like awakening from dreams within dreams, like making one's way through dense fog, boots weighted with mud as one trodded uphill, hoping to reach its apex: the clearing and the sight of the sky. In my hair there was a breeze, then in my eyes the night, then in my ears the whisper of leaves and midnight insects vibrating their paper mache wings, making an echoing throat of the thickets. Colors were murky, trees barely separated from their own shadows, and cast in the deep blue of the hour.

It was cold.

Whom was it that I was watching?

Rajak Kertia, heir of Ragar Kertia, standing in the forest in Lukedonia, I remembered.

Sir Urokai Agvain rose again to his feet and spat blood onto the ground.

I returned to walk the path on the edge of the forest.

* * *

In the following months, my father's condition gradually worsened, and I saw him only sparsely as one does a mayfly in winter, not due to the call of his duties, but due to preservation of his pride. I could not engage in the charade of not knowing of Sir Ragar Kertia's malady, but I took care to maintain the discretion of my awareness. Twelve days prior, I had come across my father engaged in somber conversation with Sir Gejutel, the atmosphere about them especially funereal, but there was a gentleness to my father's eyes upon which I meditated briefly before both clan leaders turned to me. It was not a common occurrence to see smiles upon their habitually sober faces, but, as though for me alone in this particular instance, they both wore the expression openly, the beneficence of which I found staggering and giving me pause. In the present day, as I stood before the doors of my father's bedchamber, I considered that their philanthropy then was born of pity for Sir Ragar Kertia's son, and a strange emotion ached within me at the thought.

Carefully and with both hands, I pushed open the doors and stepped inside. The room was located in the most upper part of the tower, surrounded by the main massing of stone of the estate, with windows that overlooked the pristinely kept though modest grounds. At the present hour, sunlight illuminated the space generously and fell upon my father's sleeping façade, providing him the touch of lively warmth that he himself could no longer generate in this comatose state. The pillows were simple and the sheets were the color of dusk. My father did not often occupy this room, and so it remained predictably sparse, though he was never one for excessive indulgence in the fanciful or in maintaining discordant collections of paraphernalia. Father had refused to enter his own sanctuary so that he might be stirred awake again by some vague hope, but, as I watched the hush of his inert form, not even a single strand of his long hair that touched upon his soft face or that fanned out upon the bed foretold of such a naively hopeful development, as the entirety of the ensemble remained only deathly still.

I watched him for a long while, and in the wicked depths of my consciousness, I was aware that I was intruding upon his privacy. Nonetheless, I braved the thought of his speculative dismissal to observe him, to stand nearer him, and to feel saddened for him and by him as I imagined a child would for their parent.

I stood and watched and waited for something that would not come, and before I was made aware of it myself, my fingers had curled tightly inwards. The sting of nails carving shallow crescents into my palm alerted me to the stirrings of my own emotionality, and I relaxed my fists with a breath. Still, this did not quiet that traitorous trembling that took place in my own heart; the feeling of which coiled around me, my chest, and my throat, crushing my carefully maintained and tirelessly built rectitude. It possessed the pressure of the end of the world, akin to the tangential impressions of various human stories I had informally encountered throughout the years, and I was suddenly no longer simply standing in the quiet room in which sunlight divided itself into squares when warm light fell upon the wall opposing the windows. The visions of my past possessed me as I found myself recounting all that I could conceive of as leading up to this moment, and I thought of all that might come in the future: fractal paths that diverged from where I stood in the sunlit room, shoes rooted to floor. Shadows turned upon my face and upon the walls as the sun reached its apex and then overcame that point in the sky, dipping downwards into the late afternoon.

I wondered what it was to be a noble, what it was to be a clan leader, a Kertia. I dipped my head in reverence. "I will not ask for forgiveness, Father," I uttered, unheard by a soul other than my own but compelled regardless to speak upon my honor. "I will act apart from your will only for a moment, and I will accept due penance when it is that you wake. ... Please, wait for your son, Sir."

Upon my heel, I turned and marched out of the room, the naive, hopeful, blasphemous Rajak Kertia.

* * *

"How many knights do you have under your command?" I asked of Karias as we stood adjacent to each other on the cliffside overlooking the perpetually crashing waves that rose and receded again and again from long before I could distinguish between sea and sky.

"A dozen or so," he answered, peering curiously in my direction.

"Will you lend them to me?"

"What for?"

"To search for Sir Frankenstein and bring him to Lukedonia." I paused, then added, "It is of great importance to me that I find this man. I... You are the only other I can seek assistance from regarding this matter. I am aware that this may trouble you—"

Karias raised his hand, stilling my plea. "You needn't go through all of that. You have my knights. You have myself." He smiled in a simple manner, in a matter of fact manner, and I came upon the realization that the charismatic quality he possessed, that I found myself returning to despite my distaste of his dramatics, was an indiscriminating compassion which he offered freely, as he was inumerably wealthy with it.

I swiftly turned to him and bowed the full depth of my gratitude. "Thank you, Karias."

There was a poignant paused as I kept my gaze low with my gift of deference, but I startled upright at the sound of Karias's laughter. " _I can't stand you Kertia men,_ " he said.

I stared at him, feeling shaken from my formalities and simultaneously strangely liberated. It would be too long before I would admit this aloud, but privately, I found his wry, crude familiarity capable of inspiring a gentle optimism within myself, and perhaps that was the reason I often sought his companionship over others. Perhaps I found myself more bearable in his company.

We both looked out across the turbulent waters.

He asked of me, "You really believe you'll be able to find him?"

I returned to him, "My belief does not matter; for my father, I will."


	3. Chapter 3

In the following weeks, the approximately two dozen knights who were under the direct command of Karias and myself, along with our crucial leadership, formed the unflagging search parties that sought the nearly mythical Frankenstein. Our efforts bore fruit at last nearing the final day of the spring season.

The beginnings of a light shower dotted our faces with the mosaics of cool water as the clouds overhead grayed into a foretelling hue, and I wondered if the exhilaration I perceived in the air that roared past Karias and myself was a mere instrument of my own unyielding emotionality or if it was something we both sensed together. As the backlit geometry of civilization emerged in our fields of vision, Karias tilted his gaze towards me to speak, though conversation was no impediment to our advance. "Rajak, I propose..." he began, tone considerate but whose cadence possessed an arrogance I had come to expect of my peer. "...that you go on ahead to meet with this human. I will watch from a distance and come to aid you should anything go awry."

"And why do you propose this?"

I heard him faintly scoff in amusement. "You're a Kertia; shouldn't you know of discretion?" he quipped. "We shouldn't reveal our hand so soon: a precaution, if you will, to tilt the field somewhat in our favor if Sir Ragar Kertia's friend and training partner and the Bonded of the Noblesse turns out to be a raving lunatic. I've never met the man myself, you see, but my father has told me of him in passing. To shake even him— _Sir Krasis?_ And what are we, Rajak? Two nobles, barely come of age, neither with soul weapons and neither having seen what this man is capable of, storming headfirst in the rain to a place we don't know."

"You speak well, surprisingly." I glanced at him then returned my eyes to the horizon as I caught the amenable upward turn of his expression. "Fine. We will do as you propose, Karias," I said and then surged forward ahead of him.

"Don't get yourself killed—"

Upon the crown of a stone building, I emerged and looked earthwards at the labyrinthine roads that had been cut and mounted onto the landscape and that crossed each other busily, thrumming with human activities foreign to a tyro as untried as myself as blood thrums through one's veins, steady and incessant. My gaze granted the various colorful engagements of the streets only a cursory sweep, however, as I trained upon the drifting shape of that infamous man, his hair cascading behind him as he moved in between the people, carriages, and the hurried clicks of equine hooves, disappearing and reappearing in my vision like a specter—a phantasmal quality that I found strikingly reminiscent of a Kertia—between shadows and the staggered silhouettes of the city's life. He shortly made haste and disappeared to the peripheries of the busier side of the borough and then beyond them to where the environment was greener and quieter and more unkempt. Such an action bid me to follow him, as I suspected a person of his capabilities knew very well whether he was tailed and knew very well if he should choose to lose his pursuers. By a stroke of luck, he had chosen to be pursued.

Sir Frankenstein came to a standstill in the thickest layer of the forest to immediately accelerate in the opposing direction of the quest thus far, and I found myself suddenly forced to the ground, back against the soft, damp earth, dirt on my neck, without even the chance to ready myself against the pressure of a hand against my throat. I stared up at him with wide eyes of alarm, breath caught in my chest at the stifling coil of his powers, but he too stared at me with a strange mixture of bewilderment and recognition, the expression in his eyes mirroring my own.

"You're..." he began.

"Rajak Kertia," I answered.

Both of us had only just begun to realize the significance of my response when, at the edges of my vision, there was a beacon of white, appearing out of the shadows in the far distance like light passing over a black cat's eye and being reflected back to reveal the glare of visitant of the night. "Another one?" Sir Frankenstein swiftly twisted around, his grip against me slipping away, and the impact of the crescent strike against his blocking arm caused the dispersal of concentric shockwaves akin to the event of a stone being dropped into a pond. Dirt billowed upwards, branches groaned, and leaves sighed.

As both dust and silence settled around us, Sir Frankenstein turned to face me again, the sharp scrutiny in his eyes nearly as sharp as Kartas and his face flattened carefully but not so thoroughly so as to disguise the displeased pull of his lips. His eyes snapped down to his charred sleeve before returning to me again. "You're Ragar's kid."

I bowed. "You are Father's friend."

"Has Lukedonia sent you—a child—to collect me?"

"...No, Sir." I lifted my head and stood at attention, willing myself to continue. "This is...not a sanctioned mission," I admitted as I resisted whatever opprobrium attempted to tear my eyes from Sir Frankenstein's to weigh my gaze downwards. "I have searched for you at my own discretion. Neither the Lord nor my clan leader knows of my being here—"

"Call your accomplice off before you continue. Then we can speak."

I turned to the direction from where the attack had descended and peered into the distance, unable to see Karias but having the conviction that he saw me nonetheless, and raised my hand, palm relaxed and open before swinging it into gentle descent to my side again. Barely a few moments later, the dirt stirred against my shoe as Karias made his grand entrance and appeared adjacent to me, landing with comparatively more grace upon the ground than I been able to manage at the human's behest several minutes prior.

"A Blerster?"

"Huh?" He scratched at his cheek and looked up at Sir Frankenstein with a sheepishness that might have convinced an onlooker that our gathering in this forest was a casual and comical affair. "You can tell?"

Frankenstein scoffed. "The resemblance is more than a mere coincidence."

Wishing to forego the trivialities, I urged on, "Please return to Lukedonia with us, Sir Frankenstein."

"So I was not mistaken; you _have_ come to collect me."

"It is extensively important that you accompany me."

"And what makes you think that I will?" His eyes narrowed in tortuous and miry ways, and his borders bristled with a violence and a darkness that made it difficult to discern where he ended and where the universe began. Yet, I could not imagine that he would be capable quite of slaughter, for I had seen him beforehand in the company of my Father, and I had seen the fairness which they held for each other and in which I was placing my faith at the present moment.

Karias, however, did not appear to possess the same faith, as apprehension rolled naively off his frame, his footing shifting in the dirt to take on a more aggressive and steady stance. He glanced to his side, at me, with worried scrutiny that I thought looked strange on his usually easy going face before lifting his eyes again to the human. They appeared at the ready to quarrel, but I had little confidence the both of us could truly apprehend Sir Frankenstein and spoke quickly.

"My father is dying."

Immediately, the pressure of Sir Frankenstein's powers vanished. The atmosphere cleared with the sudden relief of lifting one's head out of water, lungs ecstatic for air. "Ragar?"

I bowed low for the sake of beseeching him but simultaneously to obscure the strained emotion that twisted my features in discreditable ways. "Ask anything of me, Sir Frankenstein, if in exchange for your assistance respecting Sir Ragar Kertia."

"Don't waste my time. Take me to him."

We departed at once, and I elaborated upon Sir Ragar Kertia's circumstances on the trek that returned us to Lukedonia.

* * *

Here, in the stillest hour of night, at last, we arrived at the door to my father's farcical attempt at sanctuary. Karias had chosen to keep vigil at the base of the tower to watch for the appearances of any untimely visitors but had only done so after an episode of posturing as to the safeness of being alone with the human who had, without a mite of hesitation, attacked and driven me into the ground and who had demonstrated a blatant will to eliminate two young nobles should they inconvenience him so recently. I had managed to quiet him with a pointed glower.

Father was as still and cold as when I had last observed him—perhaps even more so at this point in time—his placid, statuesque figure framed by his overlapping locks of hair, long and sinuous, nestled in the gentle dip of his bed: a frail, downy moth that had been long sucked dry resting in a spider's web.

Beside me, Sir Frankenstein stepped forward towards the clan leader.

 _"You fucking idiot,"_ he muttered.

An indignance, vehement and violent, ignited within me that was sparked by the callous insolency of his words—utterly beneath what was proper in the presence of Sir Ragar Kertia—but I withheld my tongue and my violence, only managing to leash them with the presage of scorning the certainly redoubtable human.

The following sequence, I observed in utter silence without even the whisper of my own breath, for I felt as though even laying my eyes upon the scene was above my own station, but persistently, I watched and sank myself into the background until I was a respectful distance away. Sir Frankenstein boldly sat himself upon my father's bed, disturbing the arrangement that I felt forbidden from, jostling and putting the scene into motion as he then sacrilegiously reached forward to undo Father's cloak and part it with his fingers as though he had done this many times before, to the point of automation. He leaned down, arms to either side of Sir Ragar Kertia's head to support his own upper body as he craned over my clan leader. I tensed but was rooted—in a spider's web—as I witnessed the manner with which he parted his lips, opened his mouth wide enough to reveal the sickle curve of his fangs, and finally pierced cleanly through the thin, dark fabric of the Kertia uniform to sink those fangs obscenely into Father's neck. His lips pressed easily against the contours of my father's figure, and he drank.

There was a shuddering gasp, a start, the terrible groan of an oncoming storm, the tremble of the earth somewhere far away, the crack of the glaciers, the shatter of the surface of a pool, the crash of white waves against a cliffside. All of the images and sensations perceivable in the world coalesced instantaneously within my father; his eyes snapped open, his chest heaved, and his fingers trembled as they clawed and clutched so desperately at the human's back in tragic ways, crushing his dark jacket carelessly and with such earnestness that it nearly tore at his fingers and creased in lines that radiated from his grasp like a pair of inverted wings. He was living and breathing with supple pain, the effort of which threaded into his strained utterances and plainly scored his helpless expression that was twisted into such pitiful forms that I could not bear the gravity of seeing them and broke away my gaze.

Wordlessly, I turned and stepped nearer the door to offer my father and his friend the votive of their privacy.

There was a heavy sigh.

"I missed you as well..." I heard quietly of Sir Frankenstein as I closed the door behind myself and descended the tower.

* * *

Sir Ragar Kertia, the Lord's devoted right hand, esteemed clan leader of the Kertia Clan, and, finally, father of Rajak Kertia, was a noble I had perceived, since time immemorial, as entirely infallible and whose composition elucidated exactly what is was to be just and proper; Sir Ragar Kertia did no wrong, for what he chose to do defined what was correct, and I had the naïve impression that I was familiar with what was correct. As I returned to the garden where I had once seen Father engaging in strange informality with that nefarious human, I came upon the realization of the steep distance between myself and my father: I had climbed to the summit of a hill only to be dwarfed by the yawning stretch of a canyon yet impassable to me, and downwards again I slipped. Rajak Kertia, heir of Ragar Kertia and mewing, feeble lamb, sat under the shade of one of the fruit-bearing trees.

I did not turn to the quiet footsteps that approached my side and again did not turn as the person sat upon the ground beside me. It was only when he spoke that I recognized whom had chosen to be in my company. "I've spoken to Ragar," Sir Urokai Agvain said, and I straightened and was prone to jump to my feet in order to properly greet the clan leader, only for him to sedate me with a hand raised. "He has made his decision to leave Lukedonia with that human clear with the Lord. I think they are all fools, but I wished to speak with the son Ragar will choose to leave behind..." He drifted off as his expression and his tone became uncharacteristically tempered; perhaps one could even call it careful, as though he suddenly understood something fragile of me that I myself had not yet grasped. The clan leader gazed upon my face with eyes that searched my features for what I believed to be fellow-feeling: a nearly brotherly sort of intimacy that accompanied unspoken and mutual understanding and that was called empathy. I believe what he found upon my face and what he perceived was pitiful innocence, and he thought that my father was cruel. "Are you not angry?"

Perhaps in another circumstance, I would have been agitated at Sir Urokai's accusatory language, but in this garden this afternoon, I was numbed by an unfamiliar hypnagogia and felt precisely nothing, emotions as flat as blindness and as still as the frost which blankets northern plains. This particular dullness was peculiar to me, but I did not contemplate it beyond just a few moments. "It does not matter what it is I feel," I answered. "If such is Father's decision, I will not resent him for it. My faith remains with him, even if he is elsewhere."

Sir Urokai slowly rose to his feet. "You Kertias are all the same," he spat, voice pained and rueful. My answer had disappointed him.

I did not turn to watch him take his leave.

* * *

The sun made again its inexorable arcing odyssey across the sky; blues became pinks, then pinks became night as I spent the remainder of the day wandering rather aimlessly, which in itself was an event unusual enough to draw notice. Even as such, wherever I found myself that day, there seemed to be a hush that surrounded me. I could not tell if this was caused by some strange colored lens over my own perception or if it was true that passing nobles either avoided my gaze or looked upon me with particular reproach. I considered the caution that characterized fleeting footsteps. I considered the condolency that characterized whisperings: _"Poor thing, poor thing..."_

Then, that night, I came upon my father on the cliffside. He stared out towards that vast, uncaring sea, form inky and murky against the dark, but his light hair caught the moonlight in compelling ways. I watched his back and watched the gentle, rhythmic sway of his hair in silence for a fraction of an eternity, meditating upon his image with strange, mindless fervor. Finally, I approached, and he turned to me.

"Father..." I whispered, the sound rather limp and pathetic. Nothing came to me to say to him, and so I had called to him needlessly, but, recklessly and with potent greed, I felt as though I could not bear without uttering the word, even if only for the sake of hearing it once more, as though in speaking I could grasp it with my own hands and clutch it tightly, curled indefinitely within my own impudent fingers, but silence fell upon us once again, and it dawned tenderly on me that such things were impossible with the same certainty as the unreachable smile of the moon.

Sir Ragar Kertia stepped forward. "Rajak..." he divulged like a secret, like my name was something wonderful, and he looked at me with the confidence that I was worthy of his presence, his name, and his regard simply because I was Rajak Kertia. Father then extended open hands, and Kartas whispered into his grasp, its very darkness sharp and its curves possessing magnetic presence.

My breath stilled.

The soul weapon was placed within my palms, and I was only cognizant of their touch after Father had curled my fingers around them. I could not feel what it was I was holding; I could not tell whom it was I was watching. It was only by a miracle granted by a single instance of the universe's mercy that I did not drop Kartas onto the ground and flinch away from something so terrible. I found myself, strangely and shamefully and unbecomingly , repulsed by it.

I did not want Kartas.

Without sensation, my fingers held onto those blades as Father's hand slipped away from my own. Something tightened within my chest and pressed against my throat at the distance and the resulting cold, far more painfully than anything that I believed a stranger human could inflict, and such a thing must have been apparent on my character as Father's expression too reflected that yearnful ache, that rolling tide of emotion, that pressure and tremble and the watchful gaze of the universe. "Rajak," he began, and I drank every syllable desperately. "I will impart on you my final lesson." He pulled his mask downwards, and I studied every shadow madly.

His arms rose and parted, as graceful as I knew him to be, and then I was pressed into Father's chest.

I remained silent.

I felt hands touch my back.

I saw stars blink in the sky.

I heard the sea roar like blood.

" _My son..._ " he lulled.

And I closed my eyes.

It was cold.

It was warm.

It was cold.

When I opened my eyes,

he had disappeared.

I watched the sea for a long while more.

Then, I turned and walked home, Rajak Kertia, clan leader of the Kertia Clan.


End file.
